That heart stopping, pit in the stomach feeling. You just dropped your phone. You watched as your phone free fell towards the ground, landing face down. You quickly snatch it up, praying to the phone Gods that your precious device is scratch free. After turning it over, all is right again; there are no spider cracks snaking across the display!
We’ve all had that moment. Every single one of us. Yeah, there are phone guards and life proof cases, but let’s get real. We live in a world of technology! There has to be someone out there that can invent some sort of phone mechanism that senses its free-fall. Thus bracing itself and landing safely on “all fours”.
Well, sort of. You get the idea.
Good news is that the phone Gods – er, Apple – have answered our high-tech cries and are integrating the same concept as shooting rockets off to Space!
Apple has a new patent granted by the USPTO, which describes a system that can literally reorient an iPhone during free-fall, changing the angle of its ultimate ground breaking impact after first determining how best to shift it to make sure the fall does as a little damage as possible. The patent also includes descriptions of other more advanced and fantastic scenarios, including ejection devices for cables, and even retractable air foils to control the angle of descent, like those Elon Musk is testing for his reusable rockets at Space X, but built into an iPhone.
The actual meat of the patent has far more realistic goals, and uses existing tech to control the angle of a fall. It’s still not very likely we’ll see these integrated into new devices, as the description is a variation of the vibration motors contained in models that launched before the iPhone 6.
In any event, “phone dropping” is a big problem and this could set Apple apart from their competition by ten fold. If Apple is able to start building their phones with this somewhat new technology, anything is possible.
Your smartphone just got smarter!
